All the nuances that I expect our hallowed institutions of the fourth estate to grasp, I generally place in the laps of the anchors reading them, or the reporters writing them.

We all hate on Brit Hume, Bob Novack, and even I get annoyed to see Keith Olbermann adopt idiotic frames constantly. From equating liberal to democrat (I wish) and conservative to republican in nearly all coverage, to assuming simple cheap binary sides to every story - refusing in an attempt at fairness to excercise what I think is basic moral judgement. After all, we don't talk about the supposed genocide against the jewish population in Germany just because some nut job disagrees right? No...we use basic moral judgement to know that some things are right, some are wrong, and there are often more an sometimes less than two sides to every story.

Whenever I read something that irks me and I imagine posting it here, I hear Bushwa in my head appealing to me: "Hey they are only human. They can't catch everything. It's not how a news room is run." I usually tell the bushwa in my head to take a leap and proceed with my rant. The reason being that I feel that there is a price equal to the awesome power awarded those who dain to inform the public with the fruit of their microphones, keyboards and cameras. That price is (or should be) to be held to a higher standard of moral character and strength of mind than the public they seek to inform.

I know I'm not the first to jump on this tired and crowded wagon - but please bear with me I DO have a point. As an ignorant member of the public, I am thus often appalled to see that those elevated above in the information chain more often know faar less than I and seem capable of far fewer insights. I say this with great humility, knowing that my insights are neither powerful nor overly sophisticated but are generally the typical variety found with the common psuedo-intellectual. This humility is hard won in a climate where it seems I alone am able to predict the outcome of occupying an unstable, fractuous, muslim, arabic speaking country, with an army of teenagers who grew up on wu-tang clan and ACDC. I know...journalists are only human. I feel like they should be capable of more when I read them pick up faxes from the president's desk and read tem unchallenged on the air as facts - and when 'facts' are so entered they are quoted and refferenced incestuously in such comical circles as when Cheney told Russert how the NY Time collaborated a story by printing a fact that had appeared in another journal which itself sourced Cheney. This borders on the type of convultion normally reserved for the explanation of where 'credit' comes from and why nobody can afford a house anymore.

Wah. Cry me a river. They are human, they make mistakes, they are not adapting - they are pre-singularity and can't deal with information at the speed of Cheney's Rove-Powered rumor dynamo like we can. Fine. I will accept this because as Bushwa reminds me, they are the only way we can source and with a track record to establish a matter of fact. They do have a smidgen of character that has let them slide so far that a link to the NYT to back a fact is a highly credible link on this, and most forums that value attribution and truthfulness. Their frames are all wonky, and the glass has peanut butter and jelly handprints all over it, but for the time being most of us can still see through it.

So what to do? Can we no longer go after journalists on the street, pitch fork (or poster board) in hand and harass them for failing us in their jobs as reporters? If only there were someone over them, whose job it was to assign the stories they cover, stay tuned to political trends and discern wehre the smart paths to greater and more meaning full truths lie...if there were a person who could take a reporter's all too human 'master piece' and with a knife surgically remove the stupid that has grown cancer-like upon our coverage.

I posted this when I realized that I can name all these reporters. I can name anchors and journalists.

I can't name a signle editor - but I am growing ever more certain that THIS is the architect of our demise. Is it possible that we have a derth of great journalists and inbred fetus editors?

Should we learn who they are, and how they impact the product that they provide? Should we write no letters to the editor since that has become mostly a show - but instead letters to the editor's boss?

Please discuss.

Yes to all three final questions. Don't get me started. Of course they're human, and yes, bushwa is correct, except...the newsroom paradigm that bushwa worked in is all but nonexistent today. Under steady pressure, ridiculously under-staffed -- those staffers remaining under the constraints usually of more than one parent company corporate office in another city, if not five, all of whom have to be consulted and weigh in before so much as a paper clip is ordered, let alone a lead pursued -- and the best editors and staffers multi-tasked to the point of distraction and constantly forced to make decisions based on the bottom line of profit margin. Foreign and capital-city bureaus are shutting down left and right, and outsourced freelancers are replacing long-term specialists. And way too many fresh-faced post-millennials with a media degree making decisions beyond their realms of experience/expertise. Add in the critical error of trying to make print coverage jive with website stylings, diminishing the worth of both, and the all-but-impossibility of reporting that which the handful of global conglomerates who own the news media in this country do not wish reported on, anywhere other than the blogosphere. It's a wonder as much gets out as does. The network media is even worse, a direct result of the death of the Fairness Doctrine, period. Randi isn't exaggerating when she says the news has been canceled, though it might more precisely be stated that the news has been neutered. We, the people, ARE the media, and maintaining net neutrality is critical.